The Boy Who Changed
by Pippi Longstockings
Summary: Dumbledore is turning manipulation into an art form and Harry is once again his unwilling pawn. Harry has been turned into a weapon against the enemy, but in more ways than those immediately apparent.
1. A Warm Welcome

**Title:** The Boy Who Changed, Chapter 1  
**Author Name:** Pippi Longstockings  
**Email: **R**  
Spoilers: **AU. Written Post-Half Blood Prince

**Genre: **Action, Romance  
**Era: **Hogwarts Era  
**Ship(s):** D/H  
**Summary: **Dumbledore is turning manipulation into an art-form and Harry is once again his unwilling pawn. Harry has been turned into a weapon against the enemy, but in more ways than those immediately apparent.  
**Disclaimer:** This story is all the property of JK Rowling and her various publishers. I'm a merely a poor plagiarist. Have pity.  
**Author's Notes:** I'll accept all reviews including flames (provided they are constructive, not anonymous and impersonal! I'm not a target for abuse.)

**WARNING: **this story is heading in a SLASH-direction so if that's not your cup of tea please don't read further.

**Betas:** The lovely and inspiring Angel and MOI – you've been great in telling me when to cut the crap. ;)

**Archive:** Just ask!

* * *

**Chapter One – A Warm Welcome**

A bead of sweat dropped to the ground between his hands.

Muscles straining with effort, he hung there, suspended for a short eternity as the Room of Requirement stretched boundlessly away from him in all directions, blurring into distant horizons and vaulting, somewhere high above, and out of sight, into a domed ceiling.

It was a featureless space, and meant to be without distractions. The colours: monochromatic; textures: non-existent, and no comfort to be found in the infinite bleakness.

There was light without any evident source, lacking the flickering animation of candles: it was as unwavering and nebulous as the artificial strip lights found on the Muggle Underground networks. The room was also at an exact 24.7 degrees Celsius: a perfect stasis temperature that removed the need for clothing.

He was vaguely aware of his distaste at this Spartan environment as he balanced precariously on his hands. His legs were ramrod straight and pointed at the invisible roof, body naked and gleaming in the effort of maintaining the handstand. Another bead of sweat traced a rivulet down his flushed cheeks before seeking out his eye, which blinked furiously at the irritation.

But he did not flinch from his position.

His muscles tensed and quivered at the effort of keeping himself perfectly above his centre of mass. Slowly, painfully, awkwardly he began to bend his elbows until his hair, free to gravity, brushed the barren flooring in a grotesque parody of a push-up. He held his position for a silent count of one hundred, made difficult by the effort of keeping his muscles from vibrating under the strain. Blood pounded in his ears as it rushed down into his head, until all he could hear was the hammer of his rhythmic pulse threatening his consciousness. He had been upside down for an hour at least.

Then just as slowly, demonstrating perfect control, he extended his arms once more. He never once wavered in his balance though his arm muscles seemed to temporarily bulge and stretch the skin of his upper arms. Veins stood out against his slim fingers as they lay palm down on the floor, a raised etching on his taught skin.

"Now up further." The careful voice of the Headmaster was soft yet authoritative as the old man watched the efforts of his pupil. He commanded as casually as he would offer a Lemon Sherbet.

He could do little more than clench his teeth in annoyance at Dumbledore's relaxed tone. But after drawing in a whistling breath of air, which seemed oddly bland and recycled in this strange room, he summoned his last reserves of strength.

The pain which throbbed continuously in his aching limbs after hours of this physical endurance was nothing compared to the sudden shot of pain from his nimble fingers, his delicate snitch-fingers, as he raised himself onto his fingertips, his entire 12 stone of compact muscle weighing down on the 10 narrow pads of his digits.

His mind screamed at the pain and a part of him raged that he should be forced to do these near-impossible feats in this blank prison, while his friends sat idly laughing and eating at the Welcome Feast in the warmth of the Great Hall. It was his first day back, a time he should be celebrating the commencement of his final year as a Hogwarts student. He should be reunited with friends that he had not seen or spoken to all summer.

He should be anywhere but here, doing anything but this.

He almost growled at his own careless lapse in concentration. _Focus on the task at hand, idiot!_

He did not know how long he was balancing there but when the "enough" was whispered, he did not hear it at first. He was concentrating wholly on his pain. As much as his muscles screamed to just melt under the pressure, he forced himself to return to his feet with careful precision, no expression betraying the agony blazing in his hands. He returned to upright with the fluidity and easy grace of a dancer – the practised ease that made even the most complex of manoeuvres look as though they could be performed while asleep.

Dumbledore's expression was unfathomable as his calculating blue gaze swept over the young man before him and taking in the numerous boxes, ropes, vaulting horses and weights arrayed in the background. He had worked the boy hard, making him do a century of press-ups with a crippling weight placed at the base of his spine, first two-handed and then with only one. He had even made the handles of the horse blistering hot with a flick of his wand to test the boy's endurance, who had been relentless in carrying out his every order for the full 4 turns of the time-turner he had used to keep his absence unnoticed from the main body of the school.

It was only their first day back from the holidays after all, it wouldn't do to make the boy late…

"Careless, Harry. Very Careless."

It took all of Harry's weak remaining strength to keep him from lunging at the old wizard. _Careless! You just try…_ He mentally clamped down on his errant anger. Instead, he forced his mind to remain cool to the criticism as the Headmaster continued,

"Have you practiced your Occlumency at all? I felt your mind wavering from the task at hand several times." Harry's lip twitched as even under these bizarre circumstances the Headmaster could still make him feel completely in the wrong.

"Surely you understand why all this is of vital importance? We need you at your physical and mental peak when the final confrontation comes." Dumbledore's voice was quiet and shaming.

But then he smiled, allowing his eyes to crease into a myriad of tiny wrinkles. "But you have done well."

Dumbledore took advantage of the pause to look over his young charge, whom he hadn't seen for the long summer months since the end of Harry's sixth year. He was taller. Not as tall as his friend, Weasley, the gangly red-head, but he'd certainly shot up. And unlike his friend, he'd filled out to match in that strange butterfly metamorphosis of adolescence.

No longer was Harry the product of sun-deprivation and starvation rations that he always seemed on his return to school after a summer in the Dursleys' "care". Fresh air and the torturous regime he had been forced to endure at the Headmaster's behest had broadened his chest, corrected his abysmal posture, returned colour to his anaemic flesh and had wrought the distinct pattern of musculature on his wiry frame. Not quite Schwarzenegger, but a step in the right direction.

The sinuous swell of his upper arms rippled as he flexed them, pectorals tensing on his tanned chest which was smooth, hairless and glistening under a thin layer of sweat. His broad ribs tapered gently down into a slender waist beneath the hard contours of his abdominals and the line of his hip bones sloped gently into the dark hair at his groin where his flaccid member lay, thick and unselfconscious.

But the greatest change was in his face – his cheeks had lost the gaunt impression left by the half-a-grapefruits of Dudley's doomed diet. Now his cheeks had hollowed in a way that left him looking rugged, designed. The dark shadow of stubble had appeared along his jaw-line. Harry had never had to bother shaving before, or at least no more than as a token gesture to the baby fluff on his upper lip, but now it was just another change he had had to adapt to.

Dumbledore spoke again, satisfied with Harry's appearance. "The others will barely recognise you, Harry, my boy... Now run along and join the feast, but not a word of all this to your friends, mind?"

Harry nodded his obedience, docile as a dog as his mind snatched at the small praise like a starving man desperate to find meat on a discarded bone. He was partly disgusted at his own subservience to this omniscient, patronising, damned twinkly-eyed old man, but his better judgement prevailed. His guilt prevailed.

_Remember you're doing all this for Sirius, Harry. You deal with anything they throw at you. Just need to work harder on the meditation, is all._

* * *

Harry's body virtually sighed with him in relief as the first jet of warm water hit him, cleansing him of his fatigue and pain, which had settled into a mild ache in only his very fingertips.

Harry had been surprised at how quickly his body had begun to recover and adapt to his abuse of it. The training programme had only begun that summer.

It had been a year since Sirius' death and Harry still hadn't bounced back as he had been expected to. Harry had been furious: he had been used! They (that 'They' who always knew best, that 'They' who were older and wiser, that 'They' who treated Harry like a child) had kept him in the dark and this time Sirius had paid for his ignorance. When were they going to realise Harry wasn't this Golden Boy they could simply manipulate?

Harry's sixth year had been one of rebellion. Every year the death-toll of sacrifices to the Dark lord had grown and yet Harry had survived unscathed. A bruise here, a lightening-bolt scar there, but nothing that could compare to what others had endured.

He'd had enough.

It was a painful paradox that Harry had had to endure: he was responsible, and yet not allowed to take responsibility. He was guilty, but could not absolve himself. And so he had been forced to make a decision. The only decision, he realised with a bitter pang, he had ever truly been allowed to make without Dumbledore's meddling: it was someone else's turn to be the Hero of the Wizarding World. Harry's contract had run out the moment, the heart-wrenchingly agonising moment, in which Harry's last remaining family, his Godfather, had disappeared through the veil. Harry was going to make his own decisions from now on.

But Harry had been fooled once again. Dumbledore had spotted his Golden Boy's unrest and feelings of futility. He saw Harry's fury and nurtured it: he had given him a year to brood and rage without interruption. If there was one thing Dumbledore had a healthy respect for it was Destiny - with or without his interference Harry Potter could not escape the Prophecy. He was fated to confront Voldemort, willing or not.

And, as predicted, Harry had snapped.

Harry knew as well as Dumbledore that he had a responsibility to those around him. A year of disappointed glances from Ron and Hermione, a well-placed comment about "what Sirius would have wanted from his Godson…" and Harry had broken down.

When Harry had been at his weakest and most desperate Dumbledore had summoned him to his office. There had been words, accusations and tears, but finally the Headmaster had provided the solution - a way to turn Harry's hatred of everything and everyone, including himself, into something useful. Harry had allowed himself to be manipulated one last time.

Harry smiled bitterly as he recalled even the loss of his old glasses to an Opticus Servatus spell that rendered them useless. Perfect vision was a tool, glasses were an impediment. _Everything_ _in my life is used to some sort of advantage. Hell, I don't even care anymore._

It was true. Because only one on the edge of despair would have agreed to the rigorous training schedule that had been demanded of the Boy Who Lived for every day since his sixth school year had ended.

He had only managed it with the aid of a few averted eyes at the Ministry, some well-placed threats to the Dursleys and the illicit use of a Time-turner.

Every day began at 5:30am on the dot, forced from his pallet bed that at first had seemed like sleeping on concrete and nails, and into an ice-cold shower. Then he would run without food or drink, enduring the fierce contractions of his empty stomach, every day building up his speed and endurance for hours on end.

A quick flick of the Time-turner.

Then he would go back to the Dursleys' for breakfast, eating only enough to keep himself going and drinking only water. Then he would spend hours in arduous stretches and gymnastics, building his musculature until his slender body lost all its fleshiness and became all the plane lines and slender angles of concealed steel beneath his olive skin.

A quick flick of the Time-turner.

Endurance training meant that Harry kept his hand for arduously long stretches over a candle flame until the skin began to blacken to char and stink of rotting flesh and Harry nearly passed out from the experience.

A quick recovery spell and a flick of the Time-turner.

A sparse lunch followed by meditation in as many varied and uncomfortable positions as Harry could contrive – hanging one handed from a greased bar above a well-trafficked road had become his personal favourite. If he could remain focussed during that, he could remain focussed through everything.

Harry blinked as he stepped out from the steaming jet of water and ran a hand through his water-slicked hair as he used the other to wrap a towel round his narrow waist. He automatically reached for the strange crystalline bottle of opaque fluid that he had been given to keep his energy up and vitamins balanced and took a small sip; Dumbledore had warned him that it was a rare potion. So he licked his lips, collecting any of the last drops of the musky sweet brew.

Absently Harry ruffled his hair as his eyes landed on the time turner to check how long he had left before he caught up with the Present. _5 minutes._ _Crap._

* * *

It was barely a minute of hasty changing before Harry was jogging up to the imposing doors of the hall.

He stood for a moment, a lopsided smirk tugging at the corner of his lips as he contemplated being reunited with his friends, wondering if they would even notice the change in him: the fact that the new Harry could do uncountable back flips in quick succession, best even the magically-augmented equivalent of Jackie Chan with his eyes shut and even the poker-faced Draco Malfoy in the art of aloof disdain. With a sigh, he realised, _probably not. And I'm not allowed to tell them either._

Harry shrugged as he pushed the great door open wide enough to step through. It was less than a second before his presence was noticed. The silence was deafening as every eye became fixed on the new arrival.

* * *

**AN:** For those not used to British measurements, 24.5 C is around 76F and 12 stone is 168lbs. 


	2. Revelations

AN: Sorry this took so long! I've been trying to get it beta-d completely but have failed completely. So, this is only a tough n ready un-beta'd version. If you hate it, I'm sorry. I'll come back to it later.

Chapter 2 – Revelations

Harry gulped.

Harry's irrational instinctive fear of his own unwanted celebrity had returned with a vengeance, making his skin prickle defensively and his awareness of time splinter into fragmented endless intervals.

The seconds stretched.

He hastily grabbed at the disintegrating fabric of his calm demeanour, a façade he had worked long and hard to perfect, and returned his features to something he hoped resembled neutral. His adam's apple bobbed uncomfortably beneath his goose-bumped flesh.

To the casual onlooker he was as unreadable as the blank shell of a Blast-ended Skrewt.

If only the onlookers were casual.

He became acutely conscious of the hush that had greeted his arrival.

_What? _

His mind raced, feeling the attention of hundreds of pairs of wide eyes all focused solely on him. Time seemed frozen under the collective pressure of widening pupils and dilated irises that modulated to absorb the weak glow of the levitating candles; all the better to view Harry with. Even the occasional dust particle seemed to freeze as it became visible under the flickering lamps.

The spelled ceiling seemed to mock Harry with a pale lightening bolt mimicking his scar flashing across the vivid picture of the night sky, and a resounding thunderclap echoing up into the concealed rafters. The irony of the melodrama was poignant.

_I'm naked, aren't I?_

Harry's mind jumped to its inevitable nightmarish conclusion. _Somehow my clothes mysteriously vanished between here and the showers and I'm flashing the whole school. Shit. Shitedy-shit shit._

It took a brief glance down at himself for Harry to be reassured that he was in fact still fully clad in his student robes.

His eyes, unshielded by concave lenses and deliberately narrowed to avoid mimicking the reflective stare of a cat caught in a full beam headlamp, flicked around the gawking student body looking for some clue, anything, to help him work out what was going on.

He carefully maintained his facial muscles in its expression of calm disinterest, while his mind began its automatic catalogue of damage-assessment. He tried to find an alternative explanation. _What the hell could I have possibly done now?_

Standing unnaturally still under the intense scrutiny he allowed his gaze to seek out a familiar pair of heads amidst his fellow Gryffindors, one red-haired, the other brown and vaguely dishevelled. With a lurch of his stomach he saw that they also were staring at him with wide-eyed incredulity.

He was startled to notice that Ron had even let his mouth drop open giving him the look of a gormless ginger chimpanzee. Harry would almost have had to restrain a grin at the sight in different circumstances, but heightened self-awareness kept his expression rigidly dispassionate.

Despairing, almost, he shot a glance to the mottled Slytherin table. _Come on Malfoy. I can always rely on you to sneer and point out my latest spectacular humiliation._ But he was equally discomforted to see the pointed face of his pale rival completely devoid of its usual haughty contempt. Instead, the expression was curiously vacant, only a slight raising of one arrogant blonde eyebrow to indicate that he, too, was taken aback.

Harry's eyes, becoming somewhat desperate, roamed to the head table instantly seeking out his usually implacable Head of House, but Professor McGonagall too, seemed to have frozen with her fork suspended in mid-air before her, thin lips pinched together in an anxious line. 

The moment seemed to stretch out indefinitely as though everyone present had simply forgotten to breathe, though, in fact, it only lasted merely a few seconds.

Harry cleared his throat. 

Almost instantaneously the entire population of the Hall seemed to recover and the silence fragmented into various loud coughs and embarrassed laugher as conversation immediately resumed. It was an embarrassingly blatant attempt of everyone simultaneously pretending nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

Everyone's eyes suddenly became intensely preoccupied with anything that wasn't Harry, who's moment of paranoia caused him to shift defensively on the balls of his feet. Even McGonagall found a curious fascination with her plate.

But the rising bubble of chatter couldn't quite disguise the susurration of low whispering that formed its undercurrent. Harry, completely baffled though unwilling to show it, took this as his cue to force his frozen body into action and stride casually down the length of his table towards the empty place saved beside his two best friends.

Harry sank onto the scarred bench, his unease swiftly resurfacing, especially when greeted with only a perfunctory nod by a now tight-lipped Ron. _What?_ Harry looked between his two friends, ignoring that those around him had pointedly assumed an air of nonchalance though their shoulders seemed to have tensed involuntarily at his proximity, and waited for one of the two to break the silence.

Harry began to feel distinctly uncomfortable as Hermione's intense gaze seemed to flay him open. What the hell was she looking at him like that for? It was him, Harry. _She looks ready to attack me!_ He was unaware just how close to the mark he had struck, as he caught sight of Ron's expression.

He was glowering. He was furious. He was glaring…at Hermione.

Harry could feel his nose wrinkling in his utter bewilderment. The terse uncomfortable silence stretched between them like a palpable barrier of brick and mortar as Harry did not trust himself to open his mouth. It was Hermione that finally spoke.

"Hey Harry. How was your summer?" Her voice was deceptively light.

Now it was Harry's turn to gape.

"You're kidding me, right?" Harry's voice vibrated with his soft incredulity as he allowed his mask of indifference to slip. "My summer? How was my summer? I just got the welcome reception of a Professor Snape who had been caught read handed at a charity event wearing nothing but rah-rah skirt, offering sweets to small children and putting flowers in his hair, and you want to know about my summer? What, have I grown a spare head, or something?"

Harry was momentarily satisfied to see Hermione's cheeks flame scarlet up to the roots of her curls at his little outburst. She seemed hesitant to reply.

"Oh, that… It's nothing."

She punctuated her speech with a shrill little laugh that made Harry's lip curl in distaste as it reminded him of his equine Aunt Petunia.

"You just took us all by surprise, I guess. You look so… so…" Hermione seemed to lack a supply of adjectives.

"Sexy." Ron supplied the word almost viciously, and treated his dorm-mate to a sullen glower before he paled from the sensation of a sharp kick on the shin and a hissed "Ronald!" causing him to shift his gaze to a convenient chicken-drumstick.

Harry stared at him blankly.

Hermione looked up quickly to Harry, a quick smile playing over her features in a pathetic attempt to disregard Ron's interjection. The blank stare remained. Harry's brain was having slight difficulties in translation.

_Sexy... Sexy… Sexy… hmm… sexy…_

Before:

_Sexy? Fuck! Ron thinks I'm sexy?_ His head slowly began to shake in denial. _Oh nononono. No you don't. I've put on weight not had radical plastic surgery._

But the longer he noted the deliberate avoidance of Ron's eyes, the more the almost imperceptible shakes of his head began to mutate into painstakingly slow nods of realisation and it took a several of these mute nods to reassure himself that he wasn't about to break into hysterical laughter at the absurdity of the situation.

_Calm is the key. Calm now, facts soon, catatonia later._

He cleared his throat again, barely controlling his voice in the masculine registers. "So… Sexy, you say?"

Hermione did well not to cringe. Instead she gave a protracted sigh of characteristic exasperation, making Harry half-suspect that she believed that he was being deliberately obtuse:

"Oh, Harry! When was the last time you took a look in the mirror?" Answer: never.

To be honest, even if Harry _had _been exposed to a single mirror at his time with his Aunt and Uncle, catching sight of himself, malnourished, gangling, bespectacled and with the dubious addition of Dudley's cavernous cast-offs to complete the finished picture, he would not exactly been compelled to lose himself in narcissistic reverie. In fact, Harry had avoided mirrors like the bubonic plague.

He opened his mouth to say as much but Hermione ploughed on, her voice uncharacteristically breathy and her eyes gaining a feverous gleam as they raked over her friend.

Harry, never slow on the uptake, internally debated the wisdom of legging it as the import of her words began to gain surreal implications.

"What the hell happened to you over the summer? You've grown so tall, for a start! And, and…have you been working out?" Harry was surprised to see a slow flush rising up her neck prettily.

"Sorry, I couldn't help but notice. You look like you've been playing as a professional beater for the Cannons or something. And... Oh, and your glasses are gone. And the way you just stood in the doorway scowling and flexing your arms… it was so… so…"

Harry was only aware that his mouth had dropped open when she had added, "you look like some sort of Witch's Weekly Most Spankable Stud of the Month Winner."

Some sort of constipated noise like a chicken with gastric problems seemed to come from Ron's general direction, who had begun to look how Harry felt – decidedly ill.

It took Harry a few stunned moments in which to come to the conclusion, "'Mione. Sorry, but you've gone insane. I'm about as attractive as a flobberworm."

His eyebrows tightened in a scowl as this only caused her to bark out a caustic laugh, that sounded a little too close to the hysterical for his comfort. Harry spotted Ron looking between them with his jaw clenched, his teeth clenched. Harry was completely mystified by his temperamental friend's sudden aggressive hostility.

His confusion must have showed because it was then that Ron seemed to find his voice, with a concerted effort to keep it civil,

"Whatever Harry." The words were terse. "Just have a look around… those people aren't staring at your famous scar for once." He nodded in the general direction of over Harry's left shoulder. For a second Harry remained immobile, uncomprehending. But curiosity eventually won over his impulse to keep Hermione firmly within his field of vision. It was with intense trepidation that Harry steeled himself and looked...

"Oh no. This is not good."

..:…

Lust.

"Not good, at all…"

Base, primal, raw lust greeted Harry's eyes from every direction in the Great Hall. Harry's consciousness seemed oddly disconnected from his surroundings as it automatically began to evaluate his situation, a reflex borne of a life constantly spend in varying form of dire peril. It swiftly assessed the danger of his position:

_Dire Peril is about right._ His hand began to grope between the steaming platters, laden with the multitude of different foods, for a glass of water to help ease the rapid constriction of his throat. When his hand found the smooth surface of a tumbler, his knuckles almost blanched white with the strength of his nervous grasp before he willed himself to loosen his grip. He began to count the faces.  
_  
One… Two… Five.… Seven…? What is this? A sick joke?_

It was true; no less than a dozen faces were turning their lascivious attentions towards him. If Harry had not been distracted with the disconcerting realisation that the vast majority of those gazes belonged to decidedly male owners, he would have been offended that the large proportion of eyes were locked on nothing less than his arse. Hardly the most aesthetic part of his anatomy, in Harry's own opinion though obviously many would disagree.

A pair of moist vapid eyes seemed to appear in clearer focus than the others for a moment and it was with a shudder of revulsion that Harry recognised the face of none other than Pansy Parkinson gazing with undisguised hunger at his posterior.

Harry deliberately shifted forward in his seat to leave himself as little exposed to the inspection as possible without actively curling up in a ball under the table.

_But she hates me!_

Suddenly, as though the world had gone into slow motion purely for the pleasure of torturing him, Harry witnessed her glistening pink tongue emerge from behind her teeth and lick slowly along her bottom lip; leaving a trail of warm saliva in an unmistakeable symbol of invitation. Harry was temporarily transfixed with horror._ Oh…oh…ergh…_

He barely repressed a shudder before an even more desire-transfigured expression arrested his reluctant attention a couple of seats further down from his salivating contemporary, belonging to none other than the effeminate, notoriously promiscuous and flagrantly bi-sexual Blaise Zabini.

Harry could barely stand to consider the connotations of the calculating gaze that swept his visible torso and the pouting lips contorted into a self-conscious smirk. He knew of Zabini's reputation in the bedroom; nothing short of brutal. "Penis over Venus", was said to be the sallow youth's motto and Harry's confirmed-straight mentality simply refused to even consider it further than that. The rumours of his countless sadistic conquests, regardless of gender or age, had guaranteed that a circle of empty space immediately formed around him wherever he went. He'd approached Harry once, almost casually, with an offer but had never so much as deigned to glance at him again after Harry's fist had connected solidly with his perfect nose.

But that was nothing.

Nothing compared to what sat next to him.

There, hulking behind the Slytherin table was located the most mentally scarring image that Harry could remember in his entire cognisant existence, including the deaths of both Cedric and Sirius. Those at least were something that could be diminished by time and acceptance. Neither time nor acceptance, Harry firmly decided, could EVER dull the memory of the twin boulders, Crabbe and Goyle, eyeing him over with salacious appraisal.

_I will never be clean. Never. Oh, that's foul._

Both were leaning greedily forward across the wood and, to Harry's abhorrence, Crabbe's hands seemed notable by their absence from sight. Both of them. Harry took a swift gulp of water in a desperate attempt to cool the rising flush he could feel creeping up his neck. 

It wasn't only the Slytherins. Somehow the beady unflinching gaze of Justin Finch-Fletchley confirmed beyond all possible doubt that this was not simply some Slytherin fabrication at his expense. The usually proud and rigidly upstanding boy was giving him a sultry look from beneath his fair lashes that was worthy of a Comedy Award, at the same time triggering the sour taste of bile to dry Harry's mouth.

He took another long swig of the water, subtly curling over the glass protectively as he noticed every pair of eyes instantly flick to the pulse of his throat as it accepted the swallowed liquid. There was nothing remotely sexual about a sip of water.

It occurred to him suddenly that this was what a Vampire encounter must be like, his jugular feeling oddly exposed under the pressure of thirsty stares, his veins being too close to the surface, too easily bruised. His mind repelling the idea of any respectable Hufflepuff considering giving him a love bite made his desperate gaze arrive with the Ravenclaws.

The sight there made his stomach constrict painfully and Harry was forced to lower the tumbler gradually to the tabletop with a muted clunk of contact. If he's kept his hold he feared his grip would have crushed it into his palm. Not that he would have cared just then. A pair of black eyes met his own, which were glazed in disbelief.

"Cho…" Her name was barely an exhalation. He wasn't sure how long their eyes were locked, unblinking and almost unrecognising. Harry's tongue felt uncomfortably heavy as all the moisture evaporated from his mouth leaving him dry and breathless, yet he couldn't look away. There was something entrancing in the violently possessive allure that she seemed to radiate.

_Something is very wrong with this._ His mind, still in aloof detachment, commented.

Carefully, deliberately, Harry compelled himself to blink.

The moment was broken.

He whipped around back to face his friends who had been watching his reactions warily from across the expanse of bench top, Hermione almost possessively, but he could still feel the force of her stare making the hairs prickle on the back of his neck.

_Well, at least it's not my arse. _

He shook his head - it had been a whole year in which they had virtually severed all contact. _No,_ his mind corrected. _In which_ **she** _severed all contact. She didn't want anything to do with you, jerk. Remember? You__ make her cry._ But there was no trace of her characteristic tears in her eyes just then, oh no. Harry sighed and forced his body to sit up straight, now strangely depressed under his overlying general revulsion.

"Too little, too late." Murmuring the words seemed to strengthen his resolve to win the emotional battle that he had not even realised was just being fought. Carefully he allowed his body to relax and disinterest itself from the dark-haired girl's attention.

"Well, I should bloody well hope so. She's just a bloody cock-tease Harry! You deserve so much better!" Hermione's voice was shrill.

"…" Harry was tempted to cry.

His meditative training forced him not to react. There was Hermione, his loyal bookish friend, gnashing her teeth with indecision. He could almost see her thought processes: One, to rush over and claw Cho's eyes out of their sockets. Two, to leap across the table and eat him alive. Him, Harry. _This is getting out of control._ His eyes moved over to see Ron's face purpling dangerously and the connection suddenly clicked. He opened his mouth instantly in injured protest,

"No! Mate, seriously, you think I did this on purpose? She's all yours." His features needed no help in forming a look of wounded innocence.

_Shit, I knew he fancied her. Shit._

He moved on to Hermione, his tone appearing jocular but distinctly hard-edged. This was getting past any sort of normal joke.

"Oh, come off it! You don't like me like that!" Harry saw her mouth fly open to protest furiously, but for a moment she seemed to hesitate.

Harry's breath hitched in anticipation, hoping against hope he'd managed to spark off the awareness of the undeniable truth to his words. For a few seconds her brows furrowed in confusion, leaving her gaping ridiculously like a fish out of water. Harry was too disconcerted to care.

She was somehow aware that she didn't like Harry like that. She liked Ron like that, she knew this.

This was fact. Undisputable.

But then why was her sensory input screaming out in desire at the tone of Harry's physique, the extraordinarily clear colour of his eyes, the way that his unruly hair suddenly seemed sexy and effortless as though he'd just got out of bed? Why was Harry, suddenly, so goddamn irresistible? Her every synapse was insidiously suggesting new forms of Harry's perfection, her every hormone was raging. A brief struggle seemed to flash behind her eyes as mind fought matter. The impossible happened: matter won.

"Oh, Harry! How can you say that? You know I've always found you attractive. You know you feel the same about me – just trying to… to… distract yourself with brainless bimbos like Cho!" Her voice seemed to be gaining in amplitude and threat.

Harry winced as once again heads began to turn his direction, this time to witness the scene, giving up any pretence of disinterest. He was aware of several figures even half-rising from their seats, including Cho, at her words. Harry tried to make himself as small as possible, whilst maintaining an air of detachment. The look on Ron's face was murderous, a vein throbbing threateningly on his temple as his face burned as brightly as his hair. But Harry was distinctly relieved that the look didn't seem to be directed at him.

"What are you all looking at?" He snapped, loud enough to carry. Then as the heads gradually began to turn back to their half-eaten meals, he continued with his voice treacherously low, "Hermione – what are you playing at?" But when Hermione did not so much as indicate that she had even acknowledged his presence, her eyes now vacantly fixed in blank adoration of Harry, Ron seemed to deflate. A few defeated seconds later he turned mournful eyes to his best-friend, anger abandoned as quickly as it had been raised. It left him sounding tired and decidedly bitter.

"My bet's on a love potion, mate." The two boys shared a look that spoke volumes. Harry nodded his gratitude almost imperceptibly before Ron cleared his throat with bluff nonchalance.

"See, Hermione, he's just speechless." In an undertone he added with a quick glance at the other tables, "you've got more problems then just that lot Harry. Check out down there, and…" Ron's eyes almost twinkled in a moment of spiteful pleasure at Harry's cost, "and up there."

With that he stood, exerting all 6"3 of his rangy form to clamp Hermione to his side and frog-march her out of the hall. As she opened her mouth to screech a protest he stifled it with a quick, "Harry's following in a second to give you time to change, aren't you Harry?" Harry nodded hurriedly and silently promised to buy Ron and his family a mansion, a private Quidditch team, a 100 acre estate and a pony in payment for what he had just done.

It was then Harry realised what the first half of Ron's terse warning had been alluding to.

Further down, seated at his very own Gryffindor table, their faces flickering livid in the garish glows of a low sailing candelabra, were Seamus Finnegan, Colin Creevey and with a sickening spike in his heart-rate non-other than Ginny Weasley. _Oh God, Ron will really kill me_

In an instant in occurred to Harry how desperate this situation was. _I share a room with Seamus – I have to go to sleep with that boy a bare two feet away from me. I'm going to be raped as I sleep!_ A clammy fear seemed to clutch at his heart and Harry couldn't look into their familiarly lust-filled countenances any longer. He spun around in his seat and abruptly the second half of Ron's intimation was made clear.

"No, no… please, no. Not the teachers." But with a moment of dreadful comprehension, that made Crabbe and Goyle look like True Love, Harry saw that it was not simply "the teachers."

It was a teacher.

One repellent, hook-nosed, slimy, morbidly sallow teacher that had his thin lips curled in a cadaverous sneer of ardour. A thousand images like a cinema archive on interminable loops flashed over the front of his skull as he imagined every different torturous experience that being made love to by Snape would present. It was about the time his mind reached "doggy style in detention" that Harry was positive he was going to vomit.

_Oh save me._ It was that thought that made him finally, desperately; seek out the headmaster's chair in the hope of gaining some reassurance.

One look was enough to dash any such hopes. The pale blue eyes of Dumbledore, unerringly honest in their expressiveness, refused to meet his. No matter how long Harry tried to subtlety attract his attention, or waited for his gaze to the scan room and land on him; it did not happen. Short of waving his arms above his head in a final effort, he knew that this was deliberate. After a moment of sitting in blank shock at this flagrant abandonment; Harry began to scowl with the first grains of suspicion beginning to blossom.

What had Dumbledore said? "The others will barely recognise you, you've changed so much."

_Changed so much! Hah!_

Coincidence? Harry would normally have been inclined to think so, but somehow 'Coincidence' was not a word synonymous with 'Dumbledore'. Things happened at his contrivance, never at random. Somehow, Harry knew with a harsh clarity, he was in someway responsible for this.

The wildest of theories somehow appeared quite likely under this new perspective as Harry began to consider the matter from this dangerous new angle. The training had honed his body, sure. But honed it for what? Harry, in his naivety had assumed what any boy naturally would – it was training for stamina in battle and physical supremacy. He nearly shook with self-disgust at his sluggishness as it dawned on him, _why need muscle with wands? I'm hardly going to end up in a mud-wrestle with the Dark Lord, am I? This training wasn't for a fight._ He snorted with contempt at the Muggle train of thought his mind had instinctively taken, deluded him, when the innocence of that supposition began to mutate before his eyes into something far more sinister, something that fitted all to well with his current situation:

_Mud-wrestle? I'm not supposed to seduce him, am I? Not even Dumbledore is that crazy._ Complete outrage tinted his vision red. _I'm supposed to be a weapon not a killer page-three model! I'm sorry Sirius. I've failed you again. What's Voldermort supposed to do? Masturbate himself to death over me? Oh god, that's even more repulsive than Snape. If I'm going to think things like that, I'm not going to think at all!_

That did it. With a violent gesture that caused those around him to start in surprise, Harry stood from the bench and stormed down the aisle between the two central great tables, keeping his eyes fixed on the flagstones before him. It was only as the chatter of those left behind began to recede into the distance that Harry sank with relief into a stony alcove. Resting his head against the cool forgiving stone, he heaved a long sigh of relief and began to quickly run over the list of names he would be sure to avoid for the immediate future. 

Unaware to Harry, there was one name he absented. Draco Malfoy's clouded eyes were still trained on the door through which he had just seen his arch-nemesis depart and they were a picture of shock and repulsed confusion. Confusion easily traced to the embarrassing tightness of his trousers over his groin.

"Oh fuck…"


	3. Close Encounters

A/N: Argh. This hasn't been beta'd, so I'm sorry. Please could you act as my betas and point out anything you don't like? Cheers m'dears! xxx

Chapter 3 – Close Encounters

Harry knew the shadow of the alcove could not hide him indefinitely, not even through sheer-will power, wishing that it would. However, it did offer him a moment of seclusion in which to gather and reorganise his turbulent thoughts.

It was painfully ironic: he had entered the Great Hall with the carefully perfected emotional and physical control of Yoda, cultivated at the instigation of Dumbledore no less, the benevolent, understanding old man who had his best interests at heart, really, and half an hour later he was reduced to the raw nervous state of an inmate of a psychiatric ward. The irony? He was positive that the kindly old Headmaster was responsible for that too!

Harry was torn between venting his childish rage by pounding furiously against the stone wall or simply rendering himself unconscious. He almost his smiled at his novel approach to problem solving, though unfortunately, he did not have the luxury of either option. Now was definitely not the time for this.

Laboriously, Harry began the slow meditative procedure to calm his erratic breathing and return him to some semblance of restraint.

He was in shock. He was furious.

_I've been used! Again! _

The bitterness of this thought was overwhelming and Harry placed a clammy palm against the cool stone in an effort to ground himself, re-establishing a tenuous connection to reality. The stone seemed dry and slightly brittle to the touch, grains coming away on his clammy finger-pads.

A part of Harry's mind wanted to berate himself for overreacting. But he was not overreacting. Harry felt completely justified in his outrage that the man he had invariably trusted over all the years had once again taken advantage of him.

But, sexual exploitation? This time Dumbledore had plunged to new depths in humiliating Harry before his friends, his teachers, even his goddamn enemies. And those that weren't laughing at him were planning their impending marriages.

Harry allowed his head to fall forward into his hands. _Mr. and Mr. Zabini? Does castration suddenly seem like a plausible alternative? _His over-taxed mind seemed to take temporary refuge in caustic sarcasm. It was just too degrading. Especially considering Harry's entirely heterosexual orientation. He wasn't homophobic, not by a long shot, but… well, women just had all those endearing squishy bits. It was what was expected.

Harry groaned.

If there was ever a time to re-evaluate his orientation he decided firmly that now was not that time. Not if his preferences were all that stood between himself and Snape.

Now, that was a sobering mental image that guaranteed to keep him batting for the het. team for life.

Harry shivered as the adrenaline that had been pounding through his veins seemed to desiccate and leave him vulnerable to the draught of the hallways. His skin prickled uncomfortably as he considered his options.

Gryffindor Tower was not one of them.

Too small a space, too many enemies, too many Hermiones. His saliva gained an acerbic taste at the unpleasantness of that thought. _Since when are my friends the enemy?_ It was unsettling to say the least. Steady, dependable, studious Hermione, his friend for over six years.

His third friend in the entire world after Ron and Hagrid.

And she was lusting after him like a wanton? The most desire she had expressed for him in the entirety of their friendship was a platonic kiss on the cheek. That was as much of an indication of her disinterest as anything. After all, she'd never dared to kiss Ron… Ron, whom she'd obviously loved for years in that close-guarded kind of secrecy that meant the whole bloody world knew except for Ron and herself. For someone with an IQ to rival the Muggle genius Einstein, she really could be dense sometimes.

Harry could just feel the smile that tugged at his lips at the memories before the oppressive weight of his situation clamped down on his facial muscles, causing them to freeze in a pained rictus.

_And now Ron's angry as hell._

So, if he couldn't turn to his friends? Teachers. Once again the ghastly image of the greasy-haired potions professor seemed determined to drive out his sanity. Harry ground his teeth in consternation. _Fucking… interfering… Dumbledore!_

That was it!

Dumbledore.

The man who got him into this crisis situation in the first place. Harry felt his frustration and pent up anxiety augmenting to the point that he felt himself capable of striking the fragile old wizard in the face, for once shattering that constant illusion of control he constantly projected. Harry felt that he could derive a petty pleasure from that, at least.

_No, I'm not going to start taking things out on OAPs… Not even scheming, controlling ones!_ He took a few deep calming breaths, imagining that secluded place in his mind where he could detach. The place had resorted to so many times over the past months to escape the strain of workouts, the pain of endurance tests, the guilt and grief over his loved ones and that nauseous, prickly impression that could only really be attributed to being Harry Potter, Media Sensation and Boy Bloody Hero.

He counted slowly down from ten before setting his jaw in determination.

Dumbledore.

Harry had assumed that the corridors would be deserted. He had assumed that the ravenous student body would be distracted by the abundant welcome feast for at least an hour longer.

Yet, Harry had also assumed that Dumbledore would automatically sense his urgency and be there waiting for his angry arrival, as he had done so many times over the previous years.

If Harry had stopped to think at all he would have realised the contradiction. But Harry was not exactly thinking straight when he set off in his overly-confident gait along the corridors that would lead him to the familiar gargoyle leering protectively before the ascending staircase to the tower rooms.

Then he heard it. The echo.

His footsteps progressed evenly across the stones, his heels connecting solidly with the floor.

But there was another sound. Softer, muffled. Syncopated almost perfectly with his own measured tread, so that for the length of a corridor Harry thought he was imagining it, perhaps blaming it the slight drag of his soles along the flags. But half a life-time of paranoia and the expectation of a slippered tread stalking him through the shadows on the instigation of the Dark Lord, 'Avada Kadavra' poised on the tip of their tongue…

Harry blinked and sought to pin-point the faint discrepancy in the sound of his footsteps. There it was again, the echo. Harry stopped abruptly and spun in his tracks.

Nothing.

It was gloomy in the narrow space and the sombre wall-tapestries cast palls of deeper shade, which escaped the sooty illumination of the wall brackets. It was empty. Harry's eyes narrowed in suspicion. He was positive he had heard something. Something that sounded distinctly like the sound made by someone desperately trying to be silent. His body was as taught as a bow string, poised. When he spoke he was momentarily proud to have maintained a completely level voice,

"Come out!"

Still nothing. No movement interrupted the perfect stillness. Harry's eyes flicked from side to side, trying to detect any different qualities within the darkness. Slowly, he let out the breath he had unconsciously been holding and allowed his muscles to relax. Feigning casualness he did not truly feel Harry turned back to his original direction.

He only managed a few more steps before his straining ears heard it again: the discrepancy in his footfalls. This time he didn't even bother to turn as he froze in place.

"I know you're there." He paused to allow his words to pierce the cloying darkness shrouding the edges of the hallway. "Come out where I can see you, instead of skulking like a coward!"

Harry did not see the slender silhouette detach itself from the others obscuring the recesses, but he heard the padded footfalls as the figure moved up behind him. Harry felt the instinctive cold trickle of dread disappear down the nape of his neck and follow the course of his spine.

His gut clenched suddenly when an elegant hand came to rest on his thigh.

Harry's worst fears were realised when the shadow spoke – when it spoke with the sultry Italian burr of Blaise Zabini.

"Well, well Potter." Harry felt the ghostly susurration of dry breath against his ear and the tiny hairs quivering in heightened awareness. He forced himself to stand his ground and not run screaming for the hills as the exotic accent added in a disgustingly self-assured tone, "well, well, well…"

Harry bit down hard on his tongue, squeezing his eyes closed as he did so, hoping the throbbing pain he had caused would do something to alleviate the surrealism of the situation: the elusive torch-light, the sudden warmth of another body at his back, the uncomfortable pressure of something digging into his thigh… His mind wilfully blanked, refusing to even consider what that could be.

After a moment of silence, almost vibrating with the electric tension, he gulped and attempted speech.

"Zabini, you're starting to sound a little repetitive there."

Harry's synapses flared as, in response, a gravely laugh vibrated pleasantly against his fraught skin. Harry could feel his skin blush under the tickling caress.

He was about to retch. He _needed_ to retch.

Harry swallowed the impulse immediately. He would not give Zabini the satisfaction of seeing him vulnerable. He'd be giving the Slytherin's just too much ammunition against him. Harry gritted his teeth as his cynical imagination supplied the headline, "Harry Potter's Emotional Trauma sees him Retch at the prospect of Physical Intimacy". His mind even decorated the thought with Capital Letters, that seemed to mock him cruelly.

Suddenly, he was recalled to the moment with a sickening lurch at the sound of Zabini's voice.

"Ah, Potter…" A pause. "Harry…" It was barely a murmur, poignant in its complete absurdity, its utter lack of genuine emotion. It made Harry's hand clench instantly into tight fists at his sides. It made Harry bite back down on a hysterical laugh..

"It's Potter, Zabini. Always Potter. Understand?" Harry blamed the unusual huskiness to his vocal timbre on the uncomfortable panic-induced constriction of his vocal chords.

"Oh Harry, so cold… You were cold to me before, I remember… I tried to forget you, but…surely I can simply be Blaise to you now?" The voice's Tuscan lilt made his voice sound like the purr of a well-satisfied cat, assured of its favourite place by the fire. It was smug, it was seductive and it was instantly insulting. Coupled with the feeling of a confident hand seeking out the fork in his legs, Harry let out a yelp of surprise and indignation.

"Bloody He…"

Harry was truly disgusted with himself as his body responded instantly, unbidden, to Zabini's gravely voice and intimate contact. Suddenly the hand began to draw languid circles over his traitorous groin.

Harry didn't dare so much as breathe, captivated by the horror of the moment. The torchlight wavered uncertainly.

He pressed his eyes so tightly closed that lights blared on the inside of his eyelids and his lips framed a faint groan, something lost halfway between arousal and revulsion.

Meanwhile his mind whirled through a list of inventive expletives and plots inevitably culminating into Blaise Zabini's untimely yet painfully gruesome demise.

However, the embarrassingly evident stimulation left by the casual brush of Zabini's hand certainly cleared one thing up: _Not so straight anymore, am I?_

Harry's body tensed immediately under Zabini's unhurried ministrations. He felt the hand pause on his crotch, where it at been kneading gently, taking advantage of the roughness of Harry's uniform against the responsive hardness beneath. Harry felt too dirty and violated to even notice his own greedy response.

He felt the tall Slytherin press tight against his rigid back, the ghost of lips being brushed against the indent between his shoulder blades, the boy obviously feeling the taught strain of Harry's muscles. But instead of withdrawing, the hand ghosted upwards along Harry's chest to run salaciously over the hard contour of his abdominals.

"My, we have been busy over the summer, Harry…" That was enough. That arrogantly casual exploration of Harry's chest left him almost spitting with wrathful resentment. Then there was the squeeze of his arse.

"How… dare… you..." In an instant of red blurring his vision, Harry felt himself whirling to face the beautiful Latin assailant before hoisting him bodily by the throat to pin him in one violent, fluid motion up against the wall, legs dangling uselessly above the ground. Harry felt momentary rush of satisfaction at his easily superior strength against his dark-haired opponent, who was as tall and quidditch hardened as the rest of the Slytherins strutting in their own superiority. Harry took a perverse pleasure in letting the back of Zabini's head crash back heavily against the calloused stone wall. Zabini's eyes temporarily unfocussed.

But Harry was closer to the other boy than he had anticipated, pinning him with his own body weight. He was aware of warmth exuding from the flesh pressed against his own and even more so of the prominent bulge making itself known against the inside of Zabini's thigh.

Zabini, it would seem, was equally aware for it was barely a second before he weakly rediscovered his voice. His speech was impeded by the pressure of Harry's hand against his delicate larynx.

"Oooh, aren't we a… dark horse… Potter. But then, I… s'pose a Gryffindor always would be the… dominant type." Then his lips curled to frame that arrogant laugh endemic to all Slytherins and Harry's stomach performed a lurching revolution.

His breathing seemed loud and ragged to his ears in his fury and Harry felt his palms sweating against the coolness of Zabini's narrow throat, sure his finger tips were leaving bruises. Right then he couldn't give a damn.

This was Blaise Zabini, cold-blooded heart-breaker, Slytherin, calculating bastard and dorm mate to Draco-fucking-Malfoy. Who else had stood silent and mocking all these years by the evil little bastard's side? Harry shoved him again, harder, hearing the other boy's breath hitch in pain.

"Shut up, Zabini. I said no before and I meant it. You're a viscous little shit and I want nothing… and I repeat NOTHING, to do with you, d'you understand?" Harry brought his face close enough to see the pupils widening in Zabini's auburn irises as his oblique frame blocked out the light.

"Now, I'd advise you to think closely about how much these…"

Harry's knee sought a cruel target.

"…mean to you, next time you want a quick fumble! Clear?" The parting word was equivalent to a spit in the face as Harry inflected it with as much venom and seething malice as he could muster against his crumpled opponent.

Harry did not look back as he strode away from the encounter, encumbered by the burgeoning need in his trousers that he simply refused to acknowledge. He did not even hear the whistling gasps of the boy curled into a loose foetal position behind him through the thundering of his pulse in his ears.

It was a Harry, borne on a thundercloud of wrath and guilty pleasure that caught sight of the familiar gargoyle looming before him.

Albus Dumbledore was old. He had seen too many winters melt into too many new springs to not be painfully aware of that fact. However, with his ever-present twinkle behind his half-moon spectacles Dumbledore had thought he was doing remarkably well in delaying the advance of the years. He had had a long, long time to perfect his boundless optimism and constant aura of calm.

Though sometimes it was sorely tried.

"FIZZING WHIZBEE!"

The violent roar of an enraged Harry Potter could be heard from the base of the narrow staircase, assaulting the pained gargoyle with every possible wizarding sweet he could think of. Dumbledore winced as the crescendo of candy was interrupted by an exclamatory,

"Let me IN you SMUG PIECE OF MASONRY! NOW!"

Even as the incensed command ascended to the old man's study, fracturing into multiple echoes from the fissures lining the inside of the stairwell, it seemed to communicate that the originator of the noise was in no hurry to take a tea-break from his verbal assault.

The headmaster steepled his gnarled fingers under his chin, obscuring them behind his cascade of snowy beard.

He would let his young pupil vent as much anger as possible on his innocent door-guardian. Perhaps he would feel better after he had done so. Not that Dumbledore envied the leering stonework: Harry Potter in a towering rage was not an experience for the faint hearted.

Dumbledore sighed; a long papery sound that blew his long moustaches out from his lips like tissue streamers.

A blink and the sound of an ancient gramophone squeaked into motion, churning out a crackling version of '_J'attendrai'_ that did all but drown the increasingly high pitched cries of, "SUGAR QUILLS! BLOOD LOLLIES! DAMN IT!"

The headmaster tried to focus on the heart-rendingly sentimental strain of melody. Sometimes the affinity he seemed to occasionally feel with his misguided ex-student Tom Riddle was closer than he'd usually dare to admit. After all, right now Dumbledore was not uncertain that a good _'silencio' _would not be in order for the outraged adolescent below, hardly an ethical practice usually employed with students.

Dumbledore had sympathy for Voldemort sometimes. Being the leader of a high powered movement was nowhere near as easy as he often made it appear. At least his supporters weren't all grovelling, malicious sycophants like the Death Eaters. _Thank Merlin, for small mercies…_

After all, Dumbledore _loved_ his followers, each and every one. He prided himself on his endless capacity for affection and good-humour. He had gained his position of responsibility through trust and empathy. Yet how could that be more different to Voldemort, you might think. You would be wrong to think so: affection was just as much a means to achieve an end as fear; another twisted facet to the many edged-blade of manipulation.

But unlike Voldemort, he had recognised love as a considerably more _powerful_ tool than fear. It bred conviction; it rendered people vulnerable and strong in just the right proportions.

The translucent blue eyes drifted dreamily over his capacious quarters taking in the patchwork assortment of oddities that served to make it a cosy haven and retreat from the tumult of school-life.

As the old man hummed innocently along with the music, it would have been virtually impossible to detect the unsavoury train of his thoughts. The music suddenly hiccupped as the needle wobbled in its inwards spiral before once again returning to the gentle undercurrent of ambient murmuring. _"Tout le jour et la nuit, j'attendrai toujours… ton retour…"_

"COAKROACH CLUSTERS!" The issue was unavoidable. Harry's voice was losing some of its conviction as the futility of his yelling seemed to be sinking in. This only seemed to make the blue eyes narrow further.

He had expected something to happen – but not quite this.

He'd planned so carefully. Dumbledore was hardly renowned as the greatest wizard of his age, and given an Order of Merlin to boot, for being careless in his preparations! Behind his withered congenial exterior lay the calculating intellect of something in between a philanthropic genius and a criminal mastermind.

Once as a child, over a century stretching between the reality and the memory, he had heard something from his own cantankerous headmaster during a telling-off for attempting a foolishly ambitious piece of conjuring involving a rabbit and a certain Sorting Hat…

"Albus, true wisdom lies in its concealment. Only fools boast. It is healthy to be reminded that strongest weaken and the wisest err."

Well he had certainly erred this time. No matter how well he had concealed his wisdom behind his bumbling disguise of an eccentric old man with outlandish taste in hats and a penchant for sherbet lemons…

"SHERBET LEMON!"

Dumbledore sighed. Harry would give up soon. He had every right to be angry but it took a lot of energy to be that furious with an inanimate sculpture for such an inordinate amount of time and Dumbledore was not planning on letting him in, password or not.

He merely had to sit it out in the squashy comfort of his chintz armchair, tapered boots propped up on a low footrest that seemed to be snoring gently under the weight. The old wizard noticed with idle concern that one of the golden tassels was looking particularly limp lending the stool a forlorn look of neglect. With a single flick of his wand it seamlessly repaired itself. The stool gave a little gurgle of pleasure in its dreams.

_The potion seems to have had certain minor… side-effects._

The Headmaster's narrow pink mouth jerked into a small smile as he contemplated the understatement. Well, hardly side-effects. The elixir was doing exactly what it was intended to do. Doing it a damn bit too well, in fact.

The blue eyes glazed slightly at that other unforeseen complication: the only potions master he would consider competent enough to deal with this level of delicate brewing was… well, incapacitated.

The wry smile reappeared, splitting the old man's face into a myriad of fine creases. _Bested by his own potion, no less!_ Now, Dumbledore was a man with more than a healthy respect for irony.

The Headmaster used him wizened fingers to gently rake the length of his impressive beard free from tangles, a habit he had gained over the recent couple of decades.

_Sabotage?_ Surely not. Severus was loyal and had Dumbledore's implicit rust. A long past rivalry with James Potter and a public distaste for Harry was not sufficient motive to botch one of his own potions. No, the man's pride alone would forbid him from doing it.

Besides, if Snape had foreseen the effects of this new, enhanced brew he would have perhaps been a little more cautious and prepared himself an antidote. The prospect of Severus Snape, meticulous to the last, deliberately making himself giddy with sinful hormonal impulses for none other than Harry James Potter was ridiculous in the extreme. Laughable.

But even if his sallow skinned ally had been double-crossing him all along, if he too appeared smitten with Harry merely to disguise his own guilt…? What would it achieve? Nothing. Dumbledore had taken careful note of those affected and the potion had seemed to be indiscriminate between houses and sympathies. Besides, what advantage would his Dark Friend gain from rendering the majority of his most faithful potential Death Eaters immobile by hard-ons?

Harry. _Now, that's an interesting possibility…_ Perhaps they were intended to hurt Harry. After all a virility potion of that strength was enough to override even the basic instincts of subtlety and caution. And if the object of lust was denied thinks could get nasty. Very nasty.

The Headmaster's blank gaze did little to project his frustration. This was ridiculous. The potion was not even intended to produce that scale of reaction. It was a delicate brew, designed and created for a localised target, tailor-made for the person in question.

It was designed to hide itself in the blood-stream, secreting its subtle magics slowly at first: a general impression of warmth when Harry was nearby, a heightened sense of awareness of him, his actions, his scent, a careful widening of the veins to produce a slow blush… It was a refined art! Not this hapless stampede of primal instinct.

Dumbledore's hand moved carelessly to the inviting bowl of glossy sweets that seemed to have miraculously appeared at his side. He judiciously plucked a bulbous yellow sherbet from the top of the mound and untwisted the transparent wrapping before popping into his mouth. He sucked it pensively, crunching the vacant plastic into a small ball in his palm.

He recalled summoning Professor Snape to his office to discuss the Plan when it was still in its first stages of conception. Though, of course, when the Headmaster invited someone to discuss a matter, it tended to involve very little in the way of actual discussion.

Discussion involved the other individual being actively allowed to participate in the conversation.

No, Snape was summoned to be _told_ of the Plan. His exceptional skills with a cauldron, and his unusual understanding of the… darker elements of magical brews were invaluable to the Plan's fruition. The _Amor Deciptus_ draught was one of the rarest of its kind, a distant relation to its newer, better-recognised and infinitely more legal relative: the _Amortentia_ love potion, personal favourite of Gilderoy Lockhart.

No doubt the _Amortentia _was the stronger in effect of the two brews, both based around the careful infusion of damiana and nettle, which instantly caused a powerful infatuation in the drinker upon the intended object who was specified by the careful addition of a lock of hair. But its effects had a similar impact to a steam-roller on the delicate human nervous system, belied by its delicate opalescent sheen and tantalising smell.

The _Amor Deciptus_, however, worked a far subtler magic, and a far darker purpose. Like many of the banned arts, a simple lock of hair would not suffice: this potion required human blood. The magic locked onto the ruby plasma, searching for that illusive whisper of identity it carried within it – the faint magical signature of its owner. That's how it sought a target.

Then it acted in much the same way described by Professor Snape, himself, in his traditional entrance speech to intimidate the First Years: it ensnared the mind, it beguiled the senses. It crawled through the drinker's veins like a virus, connecting every gland, every organ, every thought to the potion's object, drawing them inexorably together.

The damiana-nettle base was common enough, requiring the plants to be stripped down to their lowest foliage and steeped in boiling water before being crushed to a fine paste with a pestle and mortar.

It was what came next that required an expert potion-master's talents.

Innumerate careful additions and manipulations had to take place at precise intervals, the mixture frequently stirred for varying lengths of time counter-clockwise with an ash wand, ancient runes and sigils drawn in the powdery fumes rising from the shallow cauldron, and the blood to be added at just the right time to turn the viscous mixture colourless and sweet. But what was most important was the presence of the full solstice moon. The potion had one chance, and one chance only for success. If something were to go wrong it would be a whole year for the opportunity to arrive again.

It was a regretful feature of the older arts to depend so heavily on astrological cycles. Modern magic had advanced in leaps and bounds since then, and 'primitive methods' had been discarded in favour of more practical alternatives. But some still claimed that the traditional methods remained the most powerful.

This potion was strictly outlawed by the Ministry, described by the Department of Dangerous Substances as the "liquid Imperius". The potion's object lost all free will, completely oblivious to their addiction to the drinker, thriving off their scent, their voice, their every gesture. The effects would creep up so gradually that it was almost impossible to notice the potion's influence, yet it would even be capable of turning the bitterest of enemies into blissful lovers.

Exactly what the Headmaster had had in mind.

To his credit, the sombre potion's master did little more than narrow his eyes when he heard of what was intended for his favourite pupil.

"But Draco should make this kind of decision of his own free will. There is still hope for him to reach the right conclusions by himself." The professor's voice was flat and deliberately emotionless.

Dumbledore had been expecting the protest and merely nodded sagely. "Young Mr Malfoy is no longer in the fortunate position where his personal choice is a matter that concerns him alone." Snape's eyes darkened dangerously as Dumbledore continued, "his animosity towards Mr. Potter, much like your own for his father and Sirius Black, has been growing to dangerous levels over the past two years."

The old man was satisfied to see the black-robed man flinch slightly at the bitter memory, so he continued, "it is now his final year here and he will soon no longer be under my jurisdiction. It is becomingly infinitely more likely that he will make an active attempt against Mr. Potter's life, encouraged by his father who has already made an attempt in person with the use of Voldemort's old diary." Snape flinched involuntarily at the name, but Dumbledore barely noticed. "I'm sure you need no reminding Severus. I am sure that young Mr Malfoy will consider defecting to Voldemort a great privilege and opportunity, and no doubt his influence amongst his fellow house mates will influence their decisions in this matter also."

Dumbledore waited until he had the beetle-black eyes locked firmly by his piercing gaze before adding, "as I recall your own reaching of the, how did you put it… right conclusions?... came a little too late." He didn't miss the instant tightening of Snape's jaw, but finished all the same.

"I refuse to put more lives at risk."

Now the black eyes looked positively haunted. They both knew to what he was referring to. It had been in the year of 1977 that Snape had been a student in his final year at Hogwarts, and it had been that year in which he had gained his Dark Mark. Dumbledore had always suspected he would, of course. After all Severus Snape had been young, foolish and Slytherin. Not to mention frighteningly intelligent and painfully disillusioned. Dumbledore had been disappointed that a student with so much potential had succumbed so easily to the allure of the Dark Arts, but he had considered it "his choice to make."

Unsavoury recollections of a pasty, greasy-haired youth being tormented by his broad-shouldered Gryffindor counterparts was perhaps a measure of how much of a "choice" it had really been for Severus Snape. Sirius Black and James Potter had not realised the narrow line that Snape was precariously balanced upon between Light and Dark.

No, they had condemned him as a Death Eater at first glance. So much for the fabled Gryffindor fairness.

They did not realise that it was they, greater than any promise of power and glory, that drove Snape straight to the Dark Lord's side; the desperate need to escape a life debt to the boy he had hated and envied and hated envying. And Albus Dumbledore had done nothing to interfere.

It was barely five years later before James and Lily were killed and Sirius locked away in Azkaban for their murder. It took five years of death, destruction and Cruciatus for Snape to finally come to his senses and make the decision he should have made at the very beginning. Five years too late.

The memory was as vivid as an image perfectly preserved in a penseive:

_The young man, framed in the doorway, his sallow features piqued and livid, beads of sweat quivering on his high forehead and sliding along the bridge of his hooked nose. His dark hair hanging in damp tendrils about his hollow cheeks and his eyes darted about the room like those of a caged animal, frenzied and delirious. The last vestiges of daylight had illuminated his features with its rosy cast and made him look feverous and flushed._

_Severus Snape had staggered the last few steps into the room before sinking gratefully to the floor, his breath coming in shallow gasps, his right hand clutched at the sleeve of his robe in a vice-like grip. Something had been glistened through the gaps in his narrow fingers, something slick and crimson: the Dark Mark had secreted a putrid mixture of ink and blood._

_He had confessed everything then. Fear, regret, sorrow and desperation. The people he had sentenced, tortured and murdered. Each emotion had been alien and frightening on the once-implacable features of the Death Eater. He had been swept up by the power at first – his first experience of respect. But the death of the Potters had unbalanced something in his mind – he had helped kill a man who had once saved his life – and as much as he had desperately tried to forget a Life-Debt could not be forgotten. The remorse had hit him all at once like a sledge-hammer._

Snape understood why Dumbledore had to act this time. But he didn't have to like it.

"I understand your concern for the boy, Severus, but remember… the potion can easily cease to be administered the instant Mr Malfoy's change of allegiances becomes confirmed. He will never even be aware of the difference."

A silence stretched between them; a battle that didn't require words or wands. Finally Snape gave a small smirk. Even that small gesture seemed to cost him a considerable amount of personal anguish. Nevertheless when he spoke his voice regained some of its characteristic sneer,

"Draco and _Potter_? It'll take far more than my skills to make _that_ one ever happen on this side of hell." He turned to face the door, and added with a barely audible sigh of defeat, "Madame Pomfrey will provide me the sample of blood that I will require."

With that he had left, perhaps not even hearing the quiet, "thank you Severus."

Sucking on his sherbet lemon, lost in his thoughts nearly a year later, Dumbledore did not even consider the other explanation for his potion's failure. Well, there was nothing he could do about it now. Events would simply have to play their course – without interference.

Down below, faced with the implacable stone features of the gargoyle Harry was almost ready to cry with frustration. There was almost no room left in him for anger. He had shouted, cajoled, begged, abused and run through the entire inventory Honeydukes twice over at varying volumes and still the entrance remained stubbornly locked. Dumbledore was either out; unlikely. Or simply refusing to see him.

There was one last, hopeless, whisper of "chocolate frogs…" before he turned, took a deep breath, and without once looking back, began the dejected trudge back to Gryffindor Tower.

He had nowhere else to go.


End file.
